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December 15th, 2010 · Comments Off

In a reply to my post on a progressive deficit reduction plan, a commenter suggested that holding Federal interest costs at the rate of .0226 in the coming years would “crush” retirees and savers, and throw them under the bus. Presumably, the commenter feels the same about the possibility I brought up of eliminating interest [...]

In a recent post I wrote about “The Real Solution to the Fiscal Sustainability Problem.” But I was just kidding, folks. That was a solution only for people who think that Fiscal Sustainability means controlling the growth of the national debt, and stabilizing and reducing the debt-to-GDP ratio. That view of Fiscal Sustainability, however, doesn’t [...]

As I’ve blogged many times before, I don’t think there is a “fiscal sustainability problem” as the people who are presently deluging us with exhortations to bring the national debt and the debt-to-GDP ratio define it. That’s because I define “fiscal sustainability” in a different way than they do, as I’ve explained in another post. [...]

November 24th, 2010 · Comments Off

Pretty soon I plan to start blogging about the presentations and discussions emerging from the Fiscal Sustainability Teach-In Counter-Conference. But, first, I want to discuss the program design and its logic. That design was basically a reaction to the framing of the deficit hawk messaging developed from the beginning of the Obama Administration. The Peterson [...]

On April 28, 2010, The Fiscal Sustainability Teach-In Counter-Conference was held at The Marvin Center of The George Washington University In Washington, DC. The Conference was first proposed in a post I blogged on April 7th at a number of sites including this one. A group of bloggers responded and collectively, using primarily the Correntewire.com [...]

October 27th, 2010 · Comments Off

Ezra Klein did a piece yesterday offering the conventional deficit dove position on deficits and debt. Here’s a commentary on it. Gallup’s survey of voter preferences for closing the entitlement gap is incomplete It suggests the options on entitlements are like a second-grade arithmetic problem: You can either add stuff (tax increases) or subtract stuff [...]

October 27th, 2010 · Comments Off

On Friday, the Government reported its 2010 Fiscal Year results. Here are some fragments from a “news” article in WaPo by Vincent Del Giudice. The U.S. government posted its second straight annual budget deficit in excess of $1 trillion as lingering unemployment constrained tax revenue. The shortfall totaled $1.294 trillion in the fiscal year ended [...]

September 20th, 2010 · Comments Off

Earlier this month, Thomas Geoghegan wrote a piece for The Nation telling the Democrats the ten things they could do to really get the base excited, and at the same time do good things for the country. Here’s his list. 1. Raise Social Security to 50 percent of working income. 2. Let’s extend Medicare to [...]

September 16th, 2010 · Comments Off

Tuesday night, I thought I’d attend The National Journal’s Debate on “Our Fiscal Future” between John Podesta and Douglas Holtz-Eakin with Jim Tankersley moderating at The George Washington University’s Marvin Center. I was interested because Podesta is often thought to be on the left-wing of “mainstream” opinion, and also it is said that he is [...]

August 12th, 2010 · Comments Off

Today, Dean Baker questioned the sanity of The Washington Post, after its editorial staff once again came out for cuts in Social Security to avert a crisis which will not be manifest until 2037. In reply to the Post’s observation that this year is the first in which the Social Security program will pay out [...]